


Retail Therapy

by ThePeak



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes' Blue Coat, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Identity Porn, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Shopping, iPods
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-08 23:35:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3227729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePeak/pseuds/ThePeak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a recovering Bucky starts to develop a mean case of cabin fever, Steve thought taking him out of the Tower and into the city seemed like a dubiously good idea at best.</p><p>Then they hit Fifth Avenue.</p><p>(Or: Steve takes Bucky shopping.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Retail Therapy

**Author's Note:**

> I know I’m supposed to be working on the sequel to "All the Time in the World", but this was sitting around mostly written so I wanted to go ahead and finish the first chapter to post. Sorry!

The thing about New York in the 21st century, Steve had come to realize, is hardly anyone looks each other in the eye on the street. It wasn’t as if people back in his day were smiling and waving to every stranger they passed; cities were cities no matter what place in time they occupied. However, with the sheer number of distractions now available, Steve often felt invisible walking down the street. He both hated and loved it.

On the one hand, it had been hard at first. He’d been so achingly lonely when he’d been thawed, the occasional acknowledgment from a stranger would have been nice. On the other hand, he hadn’t experienced life as a civilian since before the serum. Thanks to his USO tours and propaganda films, Steve had been celebrity even before going overseas and receiving the Medal of Honor, truly becoming Captain America. Between the news, the movies, the shows and the comics, Steve hadn’t been able to walk down the street without being recognized at least a handful of times.

Before the Battle of New York, Steve had been able to get away with going out relatively undisguised. Nobody outside of SHEILD knew he was back. After the Battle was another story. The first time he ventured out without any attempt at concealment had been nothing short of a disaster. Paparazzi of the 21st century were disturbingly relentless, and it was more than Steve could handle.

After that fiasco, Stark shot him an email about the benefits of going out incognito. “ _I might have had to sneak out of a movie star or two’s house before_ ,” he’d written. “ _The key is looking like every other Joe Schmoe on the street and hiding your most distinguishing features. For me, that’s my devastating good looks, so it’s pretty difficult. But I’d invest in a hat and some sunglasses if I were you_.”

Steve had begrudgingly taken Stark’s advice, and found that despite the modern styles making him feel like a fish out of water at first, the right combination of clothes had him blending into the crowds of New York flawlessly.

It didn’t take long for Steve to realize this same urban camouflage technique could also work for Bucky. It had taken months to track him down, and in the end he had more or less _let_ himself be found. For the better part of a year, Bucky had been slowly but surely recovering in the safety of the newly established Avengers Tower.

However, with every ounce of regained confidence came a growing sense of confinement.  He’d make passing remarks about cabin fever, but every time Steve suggested trying to leave the tower (“ _You wanna go for a run with me, Buck_?” or “ _I’m gonna go grab some donuts, wanna come?_ ”), Bucky would shut down.  He’d make excuses, joke about there being no need to leave when Tony’s goons could deliver whatever they wanted, or downright ignore the offers. Steve understood. He’d holed up for longer than he cared to admit once the reality of everything had finally sunk in after his thaw, barely leaving the gym or his quarters in the New York SHEILD facility. Things had been far worse for Bucky.

But after months of this self-imposed internment, Steve found Bucky with his forehead pressed against the floor-to-ceiling glass of their apartment suite, staring at the city with more longing in the reflection of his eyes than Steve had ever seen. “I gotta get outta here, Steve,” he nearly whimpered as he pressed metal knuckles against the glass. “Just to know I _can_.”

Steve grabbed them civilian clothes even faster than he would have grabbed his uniform for battle.

“I didn’t think…” Bucky started, staring down at the jacket Steve thrust into his hands. “Is a good idea?”

“I do it all the time,” Steve said with perhaps a little too much eagerness. “We’ll be fine.”

It was early November, and the crisp weather outside worked to their advantage. The more layers they could get away with, the better, and it was chilly enough for Bucky to wear gloves without getting strange looks. Steve only owned one pair of sunglasses, and being the more recognizable of the two, kept them for himself. Instead, he tossed Bucky a scarf and a knitted hat. Bucky bunched the scarf up around his face before donning the hat, but inspecting the fabric tag stitched on the outside of the rim, Bucky let out a dubious huff.

“Why does this say Burton?” he said, thumbing the tag.

“I don’t know,” Steve shrugged as he pulled his leather jacket out of the closet to put on over his own hoodie. “It’s the brand. I don’t know why everything has logos on it now. Free advertising I guess. Natasha says logos are bad when you’re trying to be invisible, but it took me forever to find one of these hooded sweaters without something written on it. You can pull that tag off if you want.”

Bucky did so with poorly contained enthusiasm, depositing the tag in the trash with a thin lipped smile. He hovered near the door as Steve finished getting ready, fidgeting with cuffs of his gloves. Steve didn’t want Bucky to know that he was a little nervous about taking him out, but he’d be hard pressed to deny Bucky anything he explicitly asked for – let alone anything practically _begged_ for. He pulled out his phone to send a quick message to Natasha.

_Taking Bucky out. Stand by?_

He hated to think he might need backup if this went south, but if the last year of Bucky’s recovery had taught Steve anything, it was to hope for the best and be prepared for the worst.

_Have fun. I’ll be nearby._

With Natasha's reply, Steve turned to Bucky at the door. Bucky’s hands were shoved in his pockets, and looked as if he was trying very hard not to look impatient. He hit the elevator button with his flesh elbow, and waited for Steve to enter first as he always did.

“Tunnel entrance, please,” Steve told JARVIS as he watched Bucky position himself in front of the doors. Steve smiled at his back.

Several months ago, Bucky had noticed Steve clutching the handrail of the elevator a little too tightly as they rode it to the Tower’s gym. Bucky had been too hyper-vigilant not to notice, so Steve eventually was cajoled into telling Bucky about his STRIKE team turning on him in the Triskelion elevator. It wasn’t that he was particularly _afraid_ of elevators, per se, like people who were believed the cables would snap and let the compartment fall. Rather, it was more that elevators always dredged up the searing and overwhelming feeling of betrayal. He would have _died_ for those men, and what had he gotten in return? A hand cuffed to the wall and a stun baton to the gut, though the betrayal stung more than any amount of voltage ever could have.

It meant more than he could ever say that Bucky always stood between Steve and the doors of the Tower elevator. Steve had handled himself last time and he certainly could if it ever happened again. He didn’t _need_ Bucky’s protection, and he was sure Bucky knew that. But the gesture was priceless to Steve. Bucky was the loyalty incarnate, no matter what doubts anyone else in SHEILD or the Avengers might have ever had. Bucky’s loyalty to Steve had broken his programming, brought him back to himself, back to _Steve_. He wasn’t sure he deserved it Bucky’s loyalty, but he sure as hell cherished it.

“Where are we going to go?” Buck asked, looking out the glass wall of the elevator at the quickly approaching city beneath them.

“I don’t know,” Steve told him. Caught up in the nervous excitement, Steve hadn’t even thought about a destination. “Is there anywhere particular you want to go?”

Bucky’s jaw flexed slightly, a tic left over from back when his jaw would clench tightly shut any time an opinion was asked of him. Steve had nearly cried the first time when, after no small amount of coaxing, Bucky told Steve he wanted for breakfast. These days, it was much easier to get Bucky to admit to wanting things. Occasionally, he even volunteered that sort of information. Those were Steve’s favorite days, even if what Bucky wanted was to watch an inordinate amount of god-awful YouTube videos or to mercilessly destroy Steve again and again at poker.

“Anywhere,” Bucky said, and Steve frowned at the non-answer. Maybe admitting he wanted to leave the Tower was as much as Bucky could vocalize today. It _was_ a pretty big step for him, and Steve knew these sort of things were draining for Bucky.

“Okay,” Steve nodded. He would think of something.

“Have a pleasant day, Captain, Sergeant,” JARVIS chimed from above as they arrived at the Avengers’ private entrance. The small corridor the elevator let out to a set of secure, reinforced doors. Behind them was a tunnel that lead to an inconspicuous building around the block, where the Avengers could come and go without any notice of the ever-present paparazzi outside the Tower itself. When Steve moved in, Tony had told him he built the secret entrance because “my retinas are too precious to be destroyed by camera flashes every time I go outside, although it _is_ a crime to deny the world more photos of me.” Steve imagined that was as close of an admission he’d ever get that even Tony Stark gets worn out by his own celebrity.

For a moment, Steve considered calling for one of the several drivers Tony had employed at the Tower, but decided against it. Bucky wanted out of the Tower, and being carted around by a Stark employee might not have given Bucky the sense of freedom he was looking for. Instead, they exited through the other end of the tunnel and onto the street.

They weren’t on the street long before Steve hailed a cab. Steve pulled his hood up before climbing in the back of the car. Bucky leaned down and gave the driver’s back a dubious look, but Steve gave an encouraging jerk of the head for Bucky to follow. He did so cautiously, not quite settling in his seat as the driver asked “where to?”

“Central Park,” Steve told him, and they were on their way.

He and Bucky were early risers, so it was early enough in the morning that the world famous park wouldn’t quite be packed to the gills with tourists. It would be a nice, quiet place to reacquaint Bucky with the outside world. The cabbie let them out at Columbus Circle, and Bucky stuck close to Steve as they head into the park. They passed the empty Heckscher Bellfields, and Steve idly wondered how fast Bucky’s new arm could pitch a baseball. Maybe someday, when Bucky was doing better and the sun was a little brighter, they’ll give it a try.

For the time being, Bucky seemed content to simply trek through the park and take in the sights. He didn’t say much, just walked in companionable silence with Steve. After a few miles of aimless wandering, they climbed Belvedere Castle. After a bit more wandering, they eventually found themselves at one of the ponds.

“Can we sit?” Bucky asked, eyeing a bench with a nice view.

“Sure,” Steve said, thrilled to hear another request from Bucky. They sat in the kind of quiet that can stretch for ages between friends without a hint of awkwardness, until a few ducks came paddling up on the water. They swam in small circles in front of the bench, testing their prospects of getting some bread from either Steve or Bucky.

“Ah, sorry fellas,” Bucky crooned. “We might be old as hell, but we’re not grandpas just yet.”

Steve chuckled as the ducks seemed to understand. They paddled off after a moment and Bucky sighed.

“I think this is cheating,” he said.

“Cheating? What do you mean?”

“I’m out here but not really… _out_. We’re just hiding in the park. There’s barely anyone here,” Bucky mumbled into is scarf.

“You wanna go somewhere crowded?” Steve asked, a little confused.

It took Bucky so long to answer that Steve thought he wasn’t going to reply at all. He splayed his hands out on his knees and leaned forward, examining his gloved palms as he said “I don’t think the Tower was the problem.”

Steve went rigid. Is _he_ the problem? Did Bucky just want some space? Maybe Steve was being too overbearing, watching him like a hawk, constantly hovering to make sure Bucky was doing alright. Did Bucky feel smothered? Or worse, did he feel like he was under observation?

“Geez, Steve, _no_ ,” Bucky almost laughed. “I can practically hear what you’re thinking. It’s not you. Jesus, no. I dunno what I’d do _without_ you.”

Steve let his shoulders relax and the two exchanged weary smiles. He hated to admit how much the affirmation meant to him.

“It’s just, uh,” Bucky starts, pausing to run his hands up and down his thighs nervously. “I think I gotta…be part of humanity again.”

That hit Steve like a ton of bricks. He knew the feeling. _“Trying to get my back in the world?”_ he’d scoffed at Fury years ago. Unlike Bucky, Steve had practically been dragged kicking and screaming back into society. In fact, he still wouldn’t say that he was quite ‘back in the world’ yet. He used anything as an excuse; missions, taking care of Bucky, avoiding the media. But the reality was he wasn’t sure he was _ready_. He was both proud of Bucky for recognizing the need to rejoin humanity and actually doing something about it, _and_ slightly ashamed that Bucky, whose trauma he considered far greater than his own, was beating him to it.

“Okay,” Steve told him, nodding and getting to his feet. He could do it if he did it with Bucky. He stood in front of Bucky and extended a hand to help him up from the bench. “Let’s go be human again.”

Bucky gave him a crooked grin and took his hand. Steve made an exaggerated show of hauling him to his feet that made Bucky huff out a laugh.

“Where to?” Bucky asked. There was a nervous and excited energy between the two of them.

“I got an idea,” Steve told him as they began walking, now a little faster that they had a mission.

They made their way to exit the park at Grand Army Plaza. After the hours they’d spent wandering, they now found a greater number of people out and about. Neither of them needed their extensive experience in intelligence work to pick out the tourists from the locals. They adopted their mannerisms with ease, making sure to look up and gawk at things as they went. Bucky even took out his StarkPhone and pretended to snap a few pictures. Locals ignored tourists as best they could, and tourists were too preoccupied with the sights to pay attention to other tourists. It was a _great_ disguise.

Steve also took out his phone for photos, but he wasn’t pretending. He extended his arm and pointed the camera at himself, making sure Bucky was in the frame. Bucky realized what he was doing at the last moment and made a judgmental face while Steve grinned like an idiot. Bucky made no move to stop him from snapping the selfie, though.

“Where are we going, Captain Dork?” Bucky smirked.

“Fifth Avenue, it’s real famous for shopping, even still,” Steve told him. “There’s a store you gotta see.”

“What store?”

“You’ll know it when you see it,” was all Steve told him.

After exiting the park, they crossed the street and continued down the block. Steve watched Bucky out of the corner of his eye. Bucky tensed at the first few people who passed on either side of him, but he didn’t seem _too_ anxious. In fact, Steve saw him crack a small smile as a gaggle of kids with thick Texan accents yelled back to the rest of their visiting school group “ _we found the park, hurry up y’all!_ ”

Making sure Bucky was doing alright wasn’t the only reason he was watching him, though. He wanted to see Bucky’s face when they got where they were going. He wasn’t disappointed; Bucky’s eyes went wide as their destination finally came into view.

“What the _hell_ is that thing?” Bucky gaped. Surrounded on three sides by sky scrapers was a 30 by 30 foot glass cube, a massive white image of an apple suspended inside. The side facing the street had a glass door, where a 20-something kid in a blue hoodie and khakis stood greeting the groups of people entering the cube.

 

“It’s the Apple store,” Steve told him.

“That’s a _store_? Where’s the stuff?”

“Underground. Look, there’s a staircase that leads down.”

Bucky’s pace increased as they got closer. He didn’t approach the doors, but went to the side and looked through the glass wall. Steve came up beside him to see the spiral staircase that wrapped around a glass elevator in the center of the cube. It was brighter below than the hazy sky above.

“They sell computers and gadgets. That apple up there is their logo.”

“Oh, yeah, I recognize it from your laptop at home…” Bucky said as he took a step back to look the cube over again. “This isn’t a Stark thing? This reminds me of the atrium at the Stark Expo, but if it was Stark’s his name would be all over it. This doesn’t even have sign with real words.”

The fact that it would remind Bucky of the Expo was precisely why Steve had brought him here. Bucky might’ve called Steve a dork, but between the two of them, Bucky had always been the more interested in technology. Steve was the artist, and Bucky the science enthusiast.  He used to think they were completely separate entities, but the 21st Century was consistently proving him wrong. To Steve, Apple was a shining example.

“Tony might not want to believe it, but there are some inventors just as famous as him,” Steve told Bucky. “Apple was started by this guy named Steve Jobs. Pepper told me he out-competed Stark Industries in personal computer production when people started building them and dominated the market. His company is so popular it doesn’t _need_ its name written on it.”

“Guess Starks can’t be the best at everything,” Bucky said with a smirk.

“Want to go check it out?” Steve said, nodding toward the door. Bucky didn’t so much as respond as he did gracefully lunge to round the corner. Steve followed with a spring in his step. He hadn’t seen Bucky this excited in weeks, and it was infectious.

Bucky loved technology, sure, but he had somewhat distanced himself from it after the “Lab Incident” in the early months of recovery. Steve had told Tony once about he and Bucky going to the Stark Expo way back when, so Tony invited them to come see his lab. Bucky still wasn’t venturing out much of anywhere but to the gym or therapy at that point, but enticed by the idea of all that tech, he took Tony up on the offer to see the lab. They’d been there all of fifty seconds before Bucky caught sight of the old, now unused chair Tony used to lie in while switching out his arc reactors. He had frozen and became unresponsive for nearly an hour before snapping out of it and breaking something in his mad scramble to get out of the lab—something that Steve was sure was very expensive, but Tony never brought it up again. Bucky hadn’t stepped foot in Tony’s lab since.

Why the Apple Store was different, Steve wasn’t sure. Perhaps because there were normal people coming and going, or that it had nothing to do with Starks. Whatever it was that made this seem safe, Steve was glad for it as he watched Bucky approach the entrance without hesitation.

“Welcome to the Apple Store,” the kid, whose nametag dangling from his neck read “Donny”, smiled brightly at Bucky. His smile was wide and sincere. No wonder the management made him a greeter. “Having a good morning?”

Bucky’s step faltered when he realized the kid was addressing him. Steve wondered when the last time someone other than himself, the Avengers, or Bucky’s therapist had asked him how his day was…or even just _smiled_ at him like that. Judging from Bucky’s reaction, it had been a very, very long time. To anyone else, Bucky might have seemed just a little caught off guard, but Steve knew Bucky’s tells; Bucky was downright shocked.

“Good,” Bucky said breathlessly after a beat. “Great, actually. How’s your morning?”

“Fantastic,” Donny said, positively beaming. Steve also wondered how often somebody took the time to ask _him_ how his day was. Most people were probably too preoccupied with getting to the gadgets downstairs to exchange pleasantries with the lowly door greeter. “I could use some warmer weather, but hey; New York, right?”

Bucky actually _laughed_. “You from outta town? Because you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Donny chuckled. “Guilty. Just moved here from Tampa. You from here? How worried should I be about this winter?”

“Yeah, Brooklyn,” Bucky told him. “Spent some time in Russia, though, so I wanna say it won’t be _that_ bad, but my idea of cold might be a _little_ skewed.”

The greeter laughed a nice, genuine laugh that had Bucky and Steve joining in.

“Great, now I’m really worried!”

“Nah, just get yourself a nice coat and you’ll be okay. And remember; at least this ain’t Russia.”

Donny laughed as he told them to have a great day, and Steve and Bucky finally entered the cube. As they descended the staircase, Steve could practically feel Bucky vibrating beside him.

“That was great, Buck,” Steve said softly.

Bucky just cast him a sideways glance and smiled thinly, like he didn’t want to show how proud of himself he was. But Steve _really_ wanted Bucky to be proud of himself _and_ to know that it was okay to feel that way, so he smiled back stupidly until Bucky ducked his head and his tiny smile broke into a full-fledged grin. Bucky punched him in the arm and Steve hurriedly skipped a few steps to beat Bucky to the bottom, as if to escape from him. He couldn’t remember the last time he was this goddamn happy.

Nor could he remember the last time Bucky looked this happy. He watched as Bucky looked around at the birch tables loaded with computers and devices. The store was lit with bright lights, and the place was so sleek and clean that it was as far from Tony’s cluttered and disheveled lab as it could be.

 

“Hey, these are like yours,” Bucky said, heading toward a table of MacBooks.

“Yeah, I bought mine here last year,” Steve told him. “Natasha took me to one of these stores a while back when…well, long story. Never mind.”

“Whoa, this one is tiny,” Bucky breathed as he spotted a MacBook Air. Steve watched him cast a weary glance around at all the people in the store messing with the computers. “We’re allowed to touch them?”

“Yeah, it’s a store, not an expo,” Steve chuckled.

Bucky picked up the MacBook Air and almost flung it into the air, using more strength than was necessary in expecting it to be heavier than it was.

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky gasped, putting it down quickly. Steve laughed until it hurt.

“Can it, Rogers,” Bucky huffed, but with any real malice. “You’d probably break that thing just flipping it open.”

Steve didn’t deny it. He still underestimated his strength occasionally, and things were made so much more fragile these days. He was very gentile with his own.

“What are those?” Bucky said, nodding toward a table of iPhones.

“They’re smart phones, like our StarkPhones. Natasha says they’re better than StarkPhones, but Tony threatened war if I ever came home with one.”

“That would be interesting,” Bucky said mischievously as he went to examine the iPhones. He clicked through the menu, opening apps and reading the specs on the display. After a few minutes, he laughs. “Geez, these are better.”

“Yeah, they even function like iPods, too, so you don’t need two devices.”

“What’s an iPod?”

“These, here,” Steve said, steering Bucky toward the other side of the store. There were several tables of iPods. An iPod Nano was plugged into a set of speakers, and the Styx’s _Come Sail Away_ drifted wistfully through the air. Steve knew it from Clint’s contributions to his ever-growing list of things to catch up on.

“It’s like a hard drive, but just for music. You plug headphones in and carry it around, or stick it on some speakers like that. It holds a lot more than a vinyl record. Over a thousand songs, if you wanted, but I don’t know why you would need that many.”

“So it’s like a Walkman?” Bucky said as his eyes lit up. He shifted the iPod in his hands so that he was more or less cradling it like a precious artifact.

“What’s a Walkman?”

“It’s like this, but you put a cassette in it. The cassette has the songs on it. Not a thousand, though. Not even close,” Bucky says, his flesh thumb scrolling delicately on the wheel.

“Oh,” Steve says, a little surprised. “When, uh, when were those used?” Bucky’s piecemeal knowledge of history after his fall was a subject that he had only recently become willing to talk about. Steve knew for some reason, Bucky believed that admitting to having knowledge of things from the decades Steve missed was somehow unfair. It wasn’t until Steve had casually suggested that it would be helpful for him if Bucky could explain things he missed that Bucky started really talking about the time between.

“The 80s. A handler had one once,” his finger was still scrolling but Bucky’s eyes weren’t focused on the screen. The Styx song is just loud enough that nobody around them could possibly hear what Bucky was saying—not without the benefit of enhanced super soldier hearing. “He used to let me listen to it, sometimes, as…as a reward.”

Steve didn’t know how to respond. That was far more information than Bucky would normally divulge, especially outside of therapy or the aftermath of particularly rough nightmare. Maybe he was feeling bolder out there in the real world. His conversation with the greeter, brief as it was, had been a turning point in Bucky’s confidence. Steve could already tell.

Steve both hoped he would continue and stop. He wanted him to because this was good, Bucky talking about things. But Steve feared what he knew would come next. He knew that more than anything, Bucky despised himself for the things he did for any sort of small kindness from his handlers, so rare it had been.

“I loved it,” Bucky breathed, and his eyes had shut. “I still remember the first time he let me use it. First song I heard in decades…I almost couldn’t breathe _._ It was the first time I felt more _human_ than _machine_ in forever and…and I must have hit the back button _ten times_. I didn’t even listen to the whole album, just the same song over and over. I wanted to rip his hand off when he took it back. Couldn’t, obviously...”

Bucky let out a hysterical little giggle as he opened his eyes and looked back to the iPod in his hands. “I killed ten people on my next mission. Cleanest mission I’d completed in years. He let me use the Walkman again, longer that time. He said I’d _earned_ it. I had it the whole way back to base.”

He looked up to Steve, who wanted to cry from seeing the desperate self-loathing in Bucky’s expression.

“Ten people for some music,” Bucky said miserably. All the happiness Steve felt just moments ago was gone.

Steve knew Bucky loved music. His old pawn-shop radio had been his prized possession, beat up and crackly as it was. New ones were _way_ beyond their financial means. Bucky would come home to their shared apartment after work, kick of his work boots and turn the radio on and melt into the couch. He used to sing along while Steve preoccupied himself with sketching, his own way of winding down after the day. Some of those sketches had turned up in the museum exhibit. Looking at them now, Steve could still remember what songs Bucky had been listening and singing along to as he drew them.

Steve felt terrible for not having remembered this before. It had seemed so trivial, just a regular part of their day. Some of the smaller details were getting lost in the chaos of what their lives had become. Now, however, Steve was beginning to realize that those small things could be what Bucky needed most.

“Just…wait here for a sec, okay?” Steve told him, and Bucky nodded. Steve hated to take advantage of how suggestable Bucky was these days, but he’d only be a minute. He needed to do this without Bucky there to protest. As he walked away, _Come Sail Away_ faded out and was replaced by a song Steve didn’t know but liked the beat of. He returned before it was over.

“You don’t have to earn this,” Steve said, holding a brand new iPod Touch he’d just purchased. “You _deserve_ this.”

Bucky’s eyes widened as Steve held the box out for Bucky to take. He turned his head away and looked at anything but the box. His gloved fingers fisted the fabric of his jacket. His jaw began to clench and unclench as he wrestled with himself. Steve hated to see Bucky struggle like that, hated to cause it, but he knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was critical. Bucky _needed_ to accept this.

So, he played dirty.

“Buck,” Steve said quietly. “Please don’t do this. We’re gonna make a scene.”

Bucky stilled for a moment before letting out a weak chuckle. His grip on his jacket loosened. That was _Bucky’s_ line. How many times had he said it to Steve as he geared up to go teach some bully a lesson? _“C’mon Steve, don’t do this. We’re gonna make a scene. Well,_ you’re _going to make a scene and then_ I’m _gonna have to become part of it…”_

But it was true. This wasn’t a fight, but they _were_ acting strangely in a public place. If this didn’t resolve quickly, people were going to start looking, and that was the _last_ thing they needed. Maybe Steve should have waited until they were home, but it would have been much easier there for Bucky to reject the iPod; he could yell, storm off or completely ignore Steve, and the opportunity for progress would be wasted.

“I wonder what people would say,” Bucky mumbled wryly as he begrudgingly took the box, “if they knew how much of a manipulative shit Captain America is.”

Steve grinned. “Maybe you should have a word with all those biography writers. They obviously didn’t do their homework.”

“I’ll just write my own,” Bucky said. “I’ll call it ‘ _Steve Rogers: Captain Asshole_.’”

“I smell a bestseller,” Steve told him.

Steve watched as Bucky looked down at his new iPod. He thumbed the corners of the box almost reverently.

“Want to head home and play with your new toy?” Steve joked lightly. He was giving Bucky an out. The day had been a lot more than he had planned, and _so_ much more than he could have hoped for. It was probably a good idea to quit while they were ahead.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, finally looking up. He was smiling, and Steve felt like he could burst.

They headed outside and were sad to see Donny had been relieved of his chilly post while they had been shopping. Steve hailed a cab and the two piled in. Neither he nor Bucky were really built for back seats, but the close quarters made it easy for Bucky to snake his hand into Steve's inconspicuously.

“How ‘bout this? Do I deserve this, too?” Bucky whispered beneath the cabbie’s music.

“More than anything,” Steve whispered back, emphasizing _anything_ with a squeeze of his fingers. “And a whole lot more.”

Steve was elated when Bucky didn’t object.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m swear, I’m not even a Mac person. That whole Apple Store bit came outta nowhere. This was just supposed to be about what happens in the next chapter, but my fingers on the keyboard had other ideas…Next chapter should be up soon. Thanks for reading!
> 
> PS I'm on Tumblr!  
> im-gonna-stand-on-the-peak.tumblr.com


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